Columnist.
Hillary Clinton shows signs of anger and desperation and pops out of her shell with shrill and extreme rhetoric. She should be nervous, with both the feds and rivals breathing down her neck. But she's no more effective at scaring her attackers than any other turtle under siege. She should retreat back inside, where at least her handlers can pretend she's presidential — and inevitable. Her bunker mentality leads to unforced errors, such as irately exclaiming to Congress regarding Benghazi, "What difference, at this point, does it make?" But the more rattled she is the more she'll emerge.
Yeah, I get President Obama's point. He wants to disarm law-abiding Americans but entrust the Iranian Islamist theocracy to police itself on nuclear arms and subsidize its funding of global terrorism. But we're the "crazies." Recently, Obama dissed opponents of his Iran nuclear deal for "making common cause" with Iranian hard-liners who chant "death to America," and now he's calling us crazy. But he's the one playing footsie with those America haters. Projection is a beautiful thing. It gets old pointing out that Obama uses Saul Alinsky tactics to demonize conservatives and avoid defending his positions, but it's true.
Commentators and political consultants are working overtime to divine why Donald Trump's candidacy is explosively successful despite his breaking all the established rules. They're outthinking themselves. They say he is a flash in the pan, the darling of disaffected independents, the tea party's dream, a Clinton plant or the right wing's narcissistic alternative to Barack Obama. Folks, it's not that difficult. For many Americans — who knows what percentage? — the Republican Party is not an antidote to President Obama's seven-year wrecking ball.
Liberals are famous for shaming conservatives for their past associations with questionable characters, while they exempt themselves from the same standards. What a shocker! Every other week, a liberal Twitter troll cites a Republican politician's innocent appearance at some long-forgotten political event with the likes of a Ku Klux Klan member, hoping to besmirch his reputation. Better yet, sometimes one of them will post a black-and-white photo of such an appearance, as if it's a smoking gun that will end the hapless Republican's career.
We can acknowledge that Donald Trump's popularity is partially related to his unapologetic defense of himself and his policies, but let's examine why that is particularly appealing to his supporters and others. How did we get to this point? Grass-roots conservatives believe that their policies can make America great again, that they can make Americans more secure and prosperous. Many of them still believe in traditional values, which are now in disrepute. They are appalled at the systematic assault on their ideas in our public schools, our universities, the media and Hollywood. They are horrified by the attacks on their liberties. But they have not surrendered.
I learned a little bit about the Donald Trump phenomenon after my appearance on Sean Hannity's Fox News Channel show this week, as my comments led to galactic feedback on Twitter — some positive, some negative. Hannity showed segments of his interview with Trump and asked me and the other guests to respond to various aspects of it. Some of the Twitter critics were upset with Fox News, alleging that it failed to provide a balanced picture, seeing as all three of us appeared anti-Trump.
It's time that the sophisticated analysts who pride themselves in their ability to discern nuance realized that Donald Trump's popularity and his defenders are more nuanced than most people imagine. Because Trump is outrageous compared with the usual presidential candidate, Beltway pundits assume his followers and sometime defenders are classless rubes willing to overlook any objectionable remark he makes and his mixed record on conservative causes. These commentators seem more disgusted with Trump defenders than with President Obama's destructive agenda and the threat it represents to America.
Am I the only one getting tired of President Obama constantly berating his political opponents and accusing them of being bought? Well, he is doing it again, on his Iran nuke deal. You can always tell when Obama is nervous about a policy proposal, because he won't stop talking about it. As disturbing as Obama's militant partisanship is, what's worse is his delusional perception that anyone who disagrees with him is automatically unreasonable and corrupt.
President Obama's sordid Iran nuke deal is looking more and more like the foreign policy version of Obamacare. It's duplicitous, secretive, destructive and legacy-driven, and he's going to have to go full community organizer to get it passed. This deal was born in hell. It is the culmination of Obama's dangerously flawed philosophy that you enhance national security through appeasement. If we can secure a deal with Satan's stepchild, after all, we can remake the globe into the peaceful utopia progressives romantically envision. Never mind that this terrorist theocracy, by its own admission, is immune to rehabilitation. "Death to America, death to Israel." Even in the midst of negotiations with the Obama regime, the mullahs didn't bother to pretend they had goodwill toward us.
Can we simultaneously love our children and betray their generation and generations unborn? Do I have your attention? I hope so, but I can't take credit for that lead. I stole it from Page 1 of Mark Levin's new book, "Plunder and Deceit: Big Government's Exploitation of Young People and the Future." Conservatives have long decried the left's feigned concern "for the children" while it pursues an agenda that is wrecking their future, from Social Security and other budget-busting entitlements to the undermining of our national security. But no one has devoted a book to turning this meme on its head and cogently proving the statists guilty of that which they falsely accuse others.
The long-simmering disconnect between the Republican Party's conservative base and its leaders in government has degenerated into a full-blown schism. While President Obama accelerates his increasingly radical agenda, the GOP, despite its congressional majority, can barely muster an objection, let alone block his momentum. Other than to offer a toothless public rebuke of Obama's destructive schemes, what was the point of the 2014 GOP congressional landslide? It's no longer just a small percentage of conservatives questioning the GOP. Our people are furious -- and rightly so.
The professional hand-wringers are freaking out over Donald Trump's straight talk while displaying abysmal indifference to the deserved targets of Trump's charges.
Is anyone concerned that the media have succeeded in using a flap between Donald Trump and John McCain to divert our attention from serious issues facing the nation?
Query: If President Obama's nuke deal with Iran is so wonderful, why do the major parties in Israel oppose it? Why was Obama so excited about making a deal that, based on his previous positions, he would have opposed earlier? This agreement is baffling on multiple grounds, even for Obama. What is the urgency for the United States to enter into such a lopsided deal with a rogue nation that doesn't have a fraction of our negotiating leverage? Why can't Obama deal with Iran's leaders the way he deals with Republicans? Is he trying to validate conspiracy theorists convinced that he's the Manchurian candidate? Have you ever noticed that there is an inverse relationship between the wisdom of an Obama policy and his defensiveness concerning it?
Hillary Clinton is a walking, talking cliche who spouts decades-old sound bites that were bad enough when her husband first delivered them but are painfully anachronistic today. Same old material, same old demagoguery. You would think a self-styled "progressive" would be less regressive and reactionary, but this woman apparently believes that the Clinton magic of the '90s can be dusted off and resurrected without the slightest rhetorical modification. The problem with that is that Clintonomics only works on the heels of Reaganomics and liberals have been squeezing every last ounce of Reaganomics out of our system. In her first major economic policy speech at The New School in New York, Hillary made clear that she wants to revive the shamefully populist Clinton-Gore trope of "trickle-down economics." This hackneyed slogan is grounded in the lie that Republicans believe that only by stacking the deck in favor of the wealthiest people will the rest of America be able to do better, and then only by catching their breadcrumbs as they trickle down into the general economy.
When Benjamin Franklin emerged from Independence Hall at the close of the Constitutional Convention, a lady asked him what kind of government had been formed. Franklin reportedly responded, "A republic, if you can keep it." Franklin's answer has always been interesting because it revealed that he well understood the profound difference between a pure democracy and a constitutional republic. But far more intriguing to me was Franklin's implied concern that the newly crafted scheme of government was hardly self-sustaining and ultimately vulnerable. He and the other framers understood that liberty was rare in world history and that it would be no easy task to design a system that would both maximize and preserve it. I believe that until relatively recently most Americans cherished this system precisely because it was uniquely equipped to accomplish those purposes. Now I am not so sure.
Lately I've shared my lament that in America today we are witnessing a surreal transformation of the greatest nation in history. Last week, a spate of headlines made this point better than I could make it on my own. I was minding my business, mind you, surfing the Internet to check out the news and political sites and forums I customarily visit, and these news and column headlines, most from last week, some from a bit earlier and a few from this week, bombarded me. I wasn't looking for trouble. Nor was the satirical website The Onion one of the sites I visited. The world is upside down, inside out, sideways, crazy, nutso. Bad is good; up is down. Left is right; right is wrong. Evil is good; insanity is sanity. Abnormal is normal. Circles are squares. Hot is cold. Luke warm is red hot — among Republicans, anyway. Common sense is uncommon. The world is otherworldly. Dissent is "hate." Diversity means conformity. The good guys are the bad guys; virtue is vice; sophistry is intellectualism; jerks are celebrated; debauchery is glorified; the holy is debauched. Let me share some of these headlines, which speak for themselves — loudly and depressingly.
As I've said, I was very alarmed, though not particularly surprised, by the two Supreme Court decisions last week in which the court's majority blithely bastardized the English language, the Constitution, the rule of law and the very idea of truth in order to further advance the progressive agenda in this nation. But what troubles me more than the court's betrayal of its duty to safeguard the Constitution and the rule of law is the apparent complacency among the public about these decisions and the radical shifts we are witnessing in our culture. Why do some seem resigned to the transformation of our society? Why have they surrendered? Do they strongly believe in anything anymore? Do they not understand the implications for the future of this nation — if not for themselves, for their children?
Last week's Supreme Court rulings on Obamacare (Burwell) and same-sex marriage (Obergefell) were enormously dispiriting for reasons beyond the substantive issues of socialized medicine and same-sex marriage. I couldn't be more opposed to socialized medicine, which I believe is the endgame of Obamacare, and I am opposed to the societal sanctioning of same-sex marriage, but those are not my greatest concerns with these two rulings. In both cases, the court flouted the Constitution, the rule of law, the English language and the truth itself. People who appreciate the unique American system of government and those who value truth itself should be very concerned.
I ask you quite sincerely, What is the moral difference between racially motivated abuses of power by rogue municipal police officers and those by prosecuting attorneys? People should be concerned by Baltimore City State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby's behavior, but it is especially alarming when you consider that she is engaging in the same type of behavior that she is using her state power to criminalize. We can now see why Mosby played hide the ball with the autopsy report on Freddie Gray's death, and it certainly wasn't to protect anyone's privacy — except, perhaps, her own, because it is objectively damning to her politically driven prosecution.
